Pioneering Practice and the Disrupted Metropolis: George B. Ford and the Emergence of City Planning in the Early Twentieth Century

This work assesses the evolution and formative influences on the development of city planning in the early decades of the twentieth century. The research uses the career of pioneering American practitioner George B. Ford as a lens through which to explore the professionalization of planning from 1909 to 1931. In particular, this study investigates the transnational role of the Great War in the field’s development and the role of civic service and nongovernmental organizations in support of planning’s formation. The narrative also addresses the evolution of planning within the context of unregulated and chaotic urban change more broadly, including the devastation from natural disaster, and interprets the relationship between the urban core and the metropolitan region. As the identification of the “expertise” of the planner evolved, the disciplinary neutrality of the practitioner helped to establish the planner’s unique identity. Ford was distinctive for his involvement in some of the field’s most relevant early milestones, including his transnational engagement in France and work on the post-war city plan for Reims, which was one of the largest and most historic cities devastated as a result of the war and the first such plan approved under French law. In addition, Ford was involved in the pre-war era of plan design in America, New York’s 1916 Zoning Resolution, the pioneering official adoption of a comprehensive plan at Cincinnati (1925) and the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs